Culture

A truncated quatrain is a form I have invented in an attempt to find some appropriate English form similar—for its brevity and single-mindedness in theme—to the Japanese haiku. They consist in four lines of iambic rhythm, following the scheme tetrameter, tetrameter, and pentameter. The last pentameter line is broken into...

  John Company was the familiar name of the Honourable East India Company which administered India until the Indian Mutiny in 1858 But, Oh, if only you would raise your eyes, take time to look, not always look away, drink in the lazy buzzard in the skies or watch the...

  Solemn Legion of the brave Marching by there grave to grave, Defending faith and family, Fighting wars for our country. Solemn Legion boots in time, Drummers drumming, bagpipes whine, Marking graves with flower baskets Of the soldiers in their caskets. Past immortals we remember In the spring and cold...

The Forlorn Hope—Vicksburg 1863 Back in Vicksburg, the town was surrounded With a battle line twelve miles long. U.S. Grant sought to conquer the city, But the rebel defenses were strong. An advance storming party was risky; They could possibly lose every man. But they must cross a ditch and...

Delimitation To rhyme with proper meter in the cause Of classic forms is nothing anyone Should derogate, but old poetic laws Were fashioned to enshrine a style, not stun The poet into incoherencies By forcing words to fit a fractured sense. Adhering blindly to a rule may freeze Inventiveness; the...

Fifty years ago . . . (it seems Like only yesterday) . . . the dreams, The hopes, and the unspoken fear That marked and marred my Senior year . . . I faced a future plagued with doubt; A Cold War world turned inside out, By folks like Nixon,...

lyrics inspired by the movie Unplanned Ms. Sally loved the parties, spent her nights out "on the town." Her door was open for the boys, whenever they came ‘round. Then one morning when she woke she knew that things weren’t right, She punched up numbers on her phone, and called...

  While driving on an April day along a winding road Through rolling hills, beside the way, I spied a small abode A little cottage in a glen below a bridge I crossed, The sight of which, had I not then looked down, would have been lost. Although my eye...

  We shake our heads, and wonder, “Why?” aloud each time some speeding truck plows through a crowd, or grinning gunman gloats at blood and breath spilled and extinguished by his date with death; or when some faithless man, supposing life is little more than sex, discards his wife and...

A Poet’s Lament - for Charles Southerland, whose brilliant prose style I so painfully tried to imitate and incorporate Nobody cried when poetry died a long, slow death - a final breath, maybe even a last word that no one heard. She’d run her course, so with no remorse the...

White Is A Color, Too It seems strange to have to say this After what that great man taught, Yet I have seen so much amiss That I fear we all forgot. I’m here to share an opinion, Which might be a shock to you: All human races count as...

by Lew Icarus Bede The way I dealt with T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland was to write a poem, equally desperate, in that same allusive style—with notes. That unpublished poem Cicadas' Voices, written in the mid-1970s, though unsuccessful on so many levels, remains the most Eliotic poem I have ever...

by David Watt I recently came across the following “square poem” attributed to Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carrol). Please note that each of the six lines may be read horizontally, or vertically from top to bottom.   I often wondered when I cursed, Often feared where I would...

Congratulations to contest winners David Whippman (First Place), Randal Burd (Second Place), Theresa Rodriguez (Third Place), and Dusty Thorne (Fourth Place). Mr. Whippman's winning poem is below. Other poems may be read here.   For Falun Gong by David Whippman Their plight is real, their cause is ours. So far,...

A Journey to the East by Evan Mantyk is a historical and poetical fairytale adventure styled after Journey to the West, by Ming Dynasty writer Wu Cheng’en. The first nine chapters of the former may be read here.   I. The Mighty Monkey King Confronts an Appointment Request Form Outside...

Bunny by Sally Cook Indebted to a simple spark of life, You missed your chance at Europe’s wondrous door. A conscientious mother and a wife, You danced your dance upon an inland shore. Your simple fabrics catch my memory. Aprons and cotton stockings made a trail To sheets that sailed...

Winners announced here! Write a short poem that begins with one line from any Shakespeare play or poem. The poem should be two to four lines in length. Post it in the comments section below under your full name and general area of residence (“Bob Smith, Denver, Colorado”). Two entries...

Riddle No. 1 So astounding is this part— A major muscle, like your heart. And so astonishing its job, Without it you would be a blob: You couldn’t stand or lift or bend— You’d be a pretzel in the end. A couch potato you would be For life, if you...

Irrelephant Within the room there’s something big, But management ignores it. A redwood tree, not tiny twig? Concern they haven’t for it. Though elephant is in the room, It’s on the mouse they focus. Oblivious to pending doom, Like python ‘bout to choke us. Irrelevant is anything That doesn’t suit...

  Dust to lust to disgust to trust to must to just to dust.     Wm. Walters is a professor of English and linguistics at Rock Valley College, in Rockford, IL. His poems have appeared in literary magazines such as Chiron Review, Foliate Oak, and The Recusant and in...

Streamlined In some alternative reality I have remained unmarried, all alone. Would that have been a better way for me - Some Spartan bachelor flat, my comfort zone? Just having to look after number one: Selfish perhaps, but oh, what liberation! All the creative things I could have done –...

  This poem recounts the famous mythical battle, “Centauromachy.” It unfolds in the ancient home of the Lapiths in the region of Thessaly, Greece, a generation or two before the Trojan War. King Pirithous, Zeus’ son, prepares to wed Hippodamia (“horse-tamer” in Greek). Pirithous’ friend, Theseus, son of Aegeus, a...

  —from A Gallery of Ethopaths What generates the half-assed views That this dimwit nation spews? Why are persons mindless lemmings? From what source is this stuff stemming? Collapse of character’s the cause: A nation’s strength lies not in laws Or money, soldiers, guns, police— These things just maintain the...

  For Lori Kaye and Riley Howell I sing in praise of Lori Gilbert Kaye. When racist hatred paid a deadly call On Congregation Chabad of Poway, She stood and “took a bullet for us all.” I sing of Riley Howell of UNC. “He knew” exactly “what he had to...

Epigrams on the Decay within Academia   Liberal Artifice "Progressives," through advanced miseducation, Have shaken our fair land to its foundation.   Gustatory Chiasmus Good taste is timeless, sound, and with us always; Good times are tasteless down collegiate hallways.   Lazy The profs who plant their feet on vinyl...

Read the poetry of the recently departed John Whitworth at Trinacria or The Poetry Archive. by Sally Cook Any ordinary poet composing a landscape piece might easily imagine a dull blue sky, one small white cloud, and a narrow strip of grass from which a single stump protrudes. That sort...

An Ode to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 50 Years Later A Poetic Summary of Tom Stoppard’s Award-Winning Play As Seen Through the Eyes of Its Two Leading Characters Says Rosencrantz to Guildenstern, “I fear dear Hamlet’s lost his mind.” Says Guildenstern to Rosencrantz, “He says he’s locked up, chained, confined Within...

Venting Be angry, and do not sin. —Ephesians 4.26 We're told a large volcano roils and seethes beneath the soil of Yellowstone. The steam that rises all throughout the park, and wreathes its many pools and vales, would surely seem to validate that claim. Word is, that should that angry...

The Fall of the Fourth Estate a rondeau The Media: the Fourth Estate* Performed disgracefully of late: Delivering the news askew, Allowing certain viewpoints through To fuel the discontent and hate. Campaigning bullies will berate The citizens and educate Their friends to start deferring to The Media. All politicians propagate...

Translation by Matthew Wildermuth Note: In the time of its composition—the first decade of the 13th century—Tristan was already a timeless story of heroism and romance, yet in the hands of a great master—Gottfried von Strassburg—the tale of Tristan and Isolde was transformed into the greatest romance of the German...

  Birthday Apology William Shakespeare was born April 26, 1564 If all the world’s a stage, and all the men are women, myne eye be true, I gauge; her beard doth need a trimmin’!     The Last Poet Advanced in years and bent in bone, I shed no tears;...

Gallipoli, 1915 There are none left on earth can ever tell At first hand of this mortal waste of war Hard-fought one hundred years ago and more, The stench of death, of corpses left to swell, Their startled eyes wide open where they fell. No mockery of sleep their faces...

  O, curse Zahran Hashim and, yes, Abu Mohammad too, for evil at the Shangri-la and Batticalao, just two, of all those vicious men, who hit Sri Lanka's calm. O, Lord, the people cry aloud; they long for love and balm. Jihadist, suicidal, evil tools o' th' hateful Beast came...

  Tosspot tulip, withered, bowed and bent; __Severed stem embedded in a vase. __Natal bed a now-forsaken place. __Glory passed; its bloom and beauty spent. Birthed, bedecked, betrothed, by bulb and bee; __Leaf, to bud, to flower in rainbowed rows. __Fertile field from which each blossom rose __Now an empty,...

A special holiday post featuring "My Cross" by Joe Tessitore of New York, New York; "Pietá" by Tonya McQuade of Los Gatos, California; "The Pietá" by Michael Charles Maibach of Alexandria, Virginia.

They fell into a numbing sleep Perchance to darkly dream. The kettle for their tea was boiling; The plants were rich and green. They stoned themselves on television And marriage habits bad; Their sadness at declining Glory Muffled 'neath the fads. Quizzical they were, then, when Their children turned around...

The Cathedral, Burning by T. M. Moore Flames wreck the walls and ceilings that had stood for centuries, scorch ancient timbers, raze to ash that sanctuary made for praise, and cruelly crumble sacred stone and wood that neither wars nor revolutions could bring down. And there - where holy hands...

  The Life That Is Not Life “I’m getting ready for my trip now.” —Aurelia Brouwers (who chose to be euthanized at age 29 in the Netherlands) You said it was the humane thing to do __For those condemned to “endless pain and strife,” Yet did you ever pause to...

The Society of Classical Poets is holding its first Poetry and Culture Symposium at the Princeton Club in Manhattan, on Monday, June 17, 4 to 8 p.m. Register here. The Symposium will feature prominent poets speaking on the revival of classical poetry and arts, a chance to meet and network...

  Today poetic form is ostracised. It’s stifled and suppressed, deemed obsolete; classed as archaic, stuffy and effete, a vestige of the past to be chastised. Make no mistake, the ‘advice’ is quite prescriptive: “be modern” and, above all, “just be free” —though that idea of freedom seems to me...